Why the struggle against climate change is a class struggle
The
climate crisis is not primarily a problem of ‘believing science’
or individual ‘carbon footprints’—it is a class problem rooted
in who owns, controls and profits from material production. As such,
it will take a class struggle to solve.
In
this groundbreaking class analysis, Matthew T. Huber argues that the
carbon-intensive capitalist class must be confronted for producing
climate change. Yet, the narrow and unpopular roots of climate
politics in the professional class is not capable of building a
movement to face this challenge. For an alternative strategy, he
proposes climate politics that will appeal to the vast majority of
society: the working-class. Huber evaluates the Green New Deal as a
first attempt to channel working class material and ecological
interests and advocates building union power in the very energy
system we so need to dramatically transform. In the end, as in
classical socialist movements of the early twentieth Century, winning
the climate struggle will require an internationalist approach based
on a form of planetary working class solidarity.
